Streets of blood

3

“The Greens need all the votes they can get for the Regeneration Bill in the House of Nobles?" Geraint’s voice was rough with surprise and too many cigarettes smoked into the wee morning hours.

"We’re going to need you, Llanfrechfa." When the Earl of Manchester addressed him by his formal title, it meant the matter was serious. ‘‘It’s the elven faction, I’m afraid. They’re out to cause trouble because they think Wales isn’t getting a big enough slice of government money, the greedy bastards. Damn it, they’ve got less pollution and toxic waste down there than anywhere else in the country. What are they whining about? Probably Glendower’s doing, damn woman.” The Earl of Manchester’s antipathy toward women, in general, and the Countess of Harlech, in particular, was legendary. “We have to vote down their amendments."

“How close is it?"

“We could go down on this one. Winstanley will be sure to take note of who supported us at a difficult time.” If the earl was implying the Prime Minister’s interest, Geraint knew it meant the promise of a favor sometime in the future. Opportunities for stashing favors were Geraint’s specialty. ‘‘I know you’re a Welshman yourself, Geraint, old man, but you can be sure no one will forget your support.”

“Of course," Geraint said. “I’ll be at the House at two o’clock sharp. Perhaps we can meet in the smoking rooms for a brandy after lunch, sir." Geraint tried for just the right amount of willingness, with a terminal grovel in the “sir.” He grinned inwardly.

“Good man. Show the woman who’s boss!” The earl’s heavily lined face turned to a wash of static as Geraint cut the telecom.

Geraint wasn’t much given to the political intrigues so favored by Britain’s nobility. Supporting one faction inevitably meant that some other little clique would invariably harbor a grudge, and so he tried to avoid taking sides. When his hand was forced, he went along with the majority and never opposed the truly powerful. All he could do was hope that Rhiannon Glendower wouldn’t single him out from among the parliamentary lobby the government would need to muster for this vote. She was the last person he’d want for an enemy.

Almost dreamily he turned and twisted the tiny Chinese dragon spheres. The spheres tinkled and jingled in his fingers, and soon he had them synchronized in their gentle chiming. It was only when his senses suddenly snapped him back into the real world a few minutes later that he realized how far away he’d been, off in one of the fugue states he’d inherited from his mother, who possessed the Sight far more strongly than did Geraint. He couldn’t recall anything from his moments out of this world, just a vague premonition and uncertainty. Almost reluctantly, he reached for the Tarot and drew a single card.

The Five of Wands. Strife.

He felt unsure about the card, and despite his intimate familiarity with the images, he pulled a well-thumbed old book from an untidy pile on the small bookcase beside his desk. “A tricky and difficult time,” read the entry for the card. "The Five of Wands suggests that one will meet opposition that can only be overcome through cunning and resourcefulness. This opposition takes the form of some competing interest, a talented person or powerful group of people who do not share one’s plans, goals, and attitudes, and may even scheme against one…"

It fitted the machinations of the nobles, but Geraint felt that the card was pointing to something else, something more shadowy than a vote on a government bill. As the sense of unease grew within him, he tried to put it aside as he prepared for his appointment with Manchester. He ran a bath while brushing the charcoal-gray Italian suit cut with just the right conservatism and inconspicuousness for the House of Nobles. The scents of ylang ylang, orange blossom, and sandalwood rose with the steam. Geraint rubbed the fatigue from his eyes and began the work of massaging his facial muscles. He felt his thirtieth birthday looming ominously close this morning. Maybe it was the time of life when a man’s thoughts turned to collagen implants.

"Good. That’s settled.” Manchester was in an affable mood, partly because of his assurance that the government forces he’d marshaled would win the vote, but mostly thanks to a third fine Armagnac having made its way to his grossly spreading gut. "Oh, by the way, old boy, did you get an invitation to the Cambridge bash this weekend?”

Geraint’s ears pricked up. If the earl was referring to some function hosted by the Duchess of Cambridge, he definitely wanted an invitation. Francesca Hamilton was a most attractive woman, still only recently widowed and, most important of all, she was the richest woman in Britain.

"You mean Francesca’s do?” He brazened it out as if he’d known about it all along. A mistake; Manchester frowned slightly, but he was too dull-witted with drink to note Geraint’s over-familiarity. "Don’t know about that. Bloody woman doesn’t have many parties I get to hear about. Never enough drink at them anyway."

“No, my boy, there’s a high-powered meeting of Nobles in Business at the University Arms over the weekend. Starts Friday morning. Seminars and all that sod. Bunch of corporate wallahs behind it all, as usual. Can’t be bothered myself. If you like, take my invitation and I’ll tell the stuffed suits I’ve recommended you instead. I’m off grouse shooting with old Hamish.”

"That’s extraordinarily generous of you, sir. I’d be most appreciative." Geraint was curious about the meeting, and amused at the thought of his portly lunch companion blasting away at a bunch of hapless game birds with antique firearms, accompanied by the broomstick-thin and notoriously bad-tempered Earl of Dundee. The Cambridge meeting was of interest because it might yield Geraint some useful contacts. His investigations of the Zeta-ImpChem corporate system hadn’t come to much; their defenses were so fierce and so stacked against deckers sniffing at their forbidding Matrix systems that he didn’t dare risk it. There might be easier ways of finding out what was going on in the pharmaceuticals market. Getting a corporate suit to wax loquacious by plying him with alcohol was still easier than trying to hack one’s way past deadly intrusion countermeasures. Human weaknesses were still more predictable than any technology. Cambridge could be a good opportunity.

Geraint set his glass down on the polished mahogany table just as the first bell sounded calling the nobles into the debating chamber.

The earl rose to his feet with a grunt, the effort accompanied by a thunderous fart, which Geraint pointedly ignored. "Come on my boy, let’s teach those blasted pixies a lesson about the power of the vote. That’s what democracy is all about.”

Francesca hunched over the Fuchi Cyber-6. Decking played such havoc with her shoulder muscles that she’d need a massage afterward, but looking forward to that was part of the buzz. She was traveling light in the Matrix, having loaded a cloak program to mask her operations, analyze and browse programs for quick checks through datastores and structures, and a powerful sleaze program to get past any ID checks en route. As usual, she also had a restore program ready to repair any damage done to her deck’s MPCP, the master persona control program that was the heart of her deck’s operations. She’d paid a third of a million nuyen for the cyberdeck, and wasn’t about to risk its destruction. As a further guarantee, an alarm seed program left monitors behind that would alert her to any pursuit as she sped down the datastream.

She made a quick check on her bearings, the data bits glowing and swirling around the nondescript child that was her persona in the Matrix. This was no more than a routine job, really; checking the datastores of a very minor research group stuck away in Kent would take no more than half an hour, after which she could copy and decrypt anything interesting at her leisure. The job didn’t really justify the fee, but they were paying for her reputation. Besides, she needed extra for Rutger, the barman at the Lounging Lizard, where she often had her meets. Keeping him on a hefty retainer greased the wheels of her style, making her negotiations generally swifter and more professional. That also helped guarantee more work to follow. This was just a preliminary snoop, after all.

As she entered the system access node of Howarth Associates’ system, a feeble access program tried to check her ID. The sleaze program got her past the barrier so effortlessly that she was actually looking forward to something more challenging further into the heart of the system. Meanwhile she used the analyze program to check the sub-processing unit ahead, identifying it as the SPU controlling the flow of data to other SPUs within the system. Super! No need to get to the central processor, where she’d surely encounter more severe countermeasures and checks. She could work from this basic point.

The SPU had one nice touch in defense: a tar baby trap that would have crashed and dumped her sleaze program without ceremony had her sleaze not been able to fool it. It looked like that sleaze had been worth every nuyen she’d paid for it because the tar baby let her pass easily. Speeding further along the cluster of SPUs and into the datastores, she ran her analysis and data-checking programs while also keeping tabs on the alarm seed monitors. No reaction from the system, no alerts. It was like stealing candy from a sleeping baby.

As she was preparing to exit the system a microsecond’s jarring of her awareness kicked her pulse rate over a hundred. The analyze program gave her only garbage about what had happened, but she knew the disturbance came from some other presence in the system snooping on her and the data she’d just finished downloading into her deck. Her alarm seed monitors had not spotted the intruder, so he was probably well cloaked. She leaped from the SAN and into the grid beyond.

Her child persona spun around to see a black figure with a leather bag fleeing into the distance. She gave chase, keeping pace with the figure, wanting only to get a better look. Racing past a bewildered pair of street-walkers, she followed the figure to a SAN that screamed black IC, the deadly countermeasures programs, at her.

The figure stepped into the SAN, then turned to face her. It was utterly faceless. Where its face should have been, there gaped a bleak nothingness, a vortex of swirling emptiness.

Numbed, half-paralyzed with fright, Francesca suddenly flew back out of her chair, the trodes snapping out of her datajacks and their leads dangling over the worktable.

She was astonished. Checking her deck quietly, she found no damage. The data was downloaded and ready for the frame to decrypt and analyze it. But this was the first time she’d ever been dumped from the Matrix by a simple glance from another decker persona. For all the power of that faceless thing, however, neither she nor her deck were damaged. She’d have expected it to deploy some vicious black IC, but it hadn’t. What the hell was going on?

"Right, you ugly bastard, whoever you are,” she said to her empty apartment. "I’m coming back with some armor and defenses that’ll make even you think twice.” But when she gingerly reentered the Matrix and tracked the SAN into which the figure had vanished, her child persona drew back suddenly. It was the entrance to the Transys Neuronet system. No way! Her resolve evaporated as fast as it had formed. She didn’t intend to go headlong into the system of the most paranoid and dangerous cyber-research corporation in Britain.

Francesca didn’t like letting go of an unsolved mystery, but she knew when she needed a little help. Armor and shield programs executed from an independent frame would be just a start, but first she needed to touch base with some contacts outside the Matrix. She ignored her aching shoulders and back and keyed in the telecom code. He wasn’t home, but that was expected. She left a message instead.

“Geraint, you slippery cobber, I’ve got something a little wild on my hands. Dinner at the Savoy Grill at eight? Don’t drink too much-I need your mind intact. RSVP, Welsh boy.”

The government won by a majority of twenty-one votes, the Cambridge meeting looked worthwhile, and Geraint arrived home to find that the Empress had called. He’d been half-expecting to hear from her, yet when he wrote a card to be sent by courier, he put the date for dinner at the Savoy Hotel at two days from now. He wasn’t sure what made him want to delay. Some stubborn uncertainty in him just wasn’t ready for things to begin happening so swiftly.

The killer is satiated right now, but he’s still learning what needs to be done. With no one to mourn her, what’s left of Polly Nichols lies in the morgue. It has begun, but no one has noticed. Yet.